Arcade

by Robert Maxxe

  She left the chair and began browsing the bookshelves. They were packed with books about computers, most of them thick heavy technical volumes incomprehensible to the untrained, though there were some of the popular works published in recent years to satisfy the growing curiosity of the general public. The Soul of a New Machine. Machines Who Think. Carrie made a mental note to ask Lon if she could borrow a few. If there was any chance of sharing his life, she ought to make herself conversant with the technology he plainly loved.

  She was about to pull a book and start reading when Lon announced "All done!" and joined her in front of a shelf.

  "Want me to pick a few for you to read?" he said.

  She turned to him and nodded. "But later. Right now, let's go upstairs."

  The bedroom had clearly been decorated to please a man alone, dark definite colors, hunting prints on the wall, and a huge projection-screen television occupying too much space at the end of the bed. Lon went right to the window and started drawing the curtains.

  "No," Carrie said softly. "I want to see everything."

  They undressed each other amid kisses and caresses and then stood naked together, mouths, skins, fingers exploring each other until she whisked back the bedspread and pulled him down with her. Neither of them could wait, not this time. Carrie actually swooned with delight as he slid down into her, went into a floating faint where she had no consciousness of anything but the sensation, sweet hard frictions rising through her until she felt his rocking spasm. Then, as he eased down and her arms enfolded him, she was taken in surprise by the completeness of her own shuddering detonation.

  They lay back and stretched and lightly traced the outlines of their bodies, touching sometimes as though only to make sure the substance was real. In a while they made love again, but taking it slowly now. Perhaps it was only because it had been so long since she'd been touched, but it seemed to Carrie that it had never been this good, even with Mike. Abandoning herself at the end to the ecstasy streaking through every nerve, she pressed her mouth hard against Lon, held the smooth muscled roundness of his shoulder between her teeth, and drank in the smell and taste of him. If he would have her, she thought in the moments when she came down from the height, she could be happy with him for the rest of her life.

  They rested. Head on his chest, Carrie fell into a doze, for how long she had no idea except when she opened her eyes the light outside the window was subtler, more golden.

  "Sleep well?" he said when she lifted her head. He had pulled himself up to lean against the headboard and was reading a magazine, the cover folded back.

  "Made up a whole night's worth. What's the time?"

  Lon nodded to the digital clock on the dresser, lighted numerals showing 4:07. As he closed the magazine and laid it on the night table, Carrie saw it was one of his professional journals, a picture of a computer on the cover. Thinking of herself lying peacefully asleep while Lon killed time with business sparked a moment of pique. Mike had been the same: satisfy her royally—and when they were done he'd read his goddamn reports from the office. Why didn't men glow for a while? It made Carrie wonder self-consciously how she looked, and she might have gotten up to do something with her face, but then she remembered her touch-up cosmetics were gone with the purse.

  Now, suddenly, she felt a need to tell Lon about it. Perhaps just for his reassurances. Or maybe as a test, to see how much allowance he was ready to make for her anxieties.

  So she did. In a sentence. On the way over she had stopped at the arcade and the purse was gone.

  Behind his thoughtful silence, she guessed he was thinking it was a funny thing to bring up while they were lying together naked, rested and ready for better things than small talk.

  "Were you there when the doors opened?" he asked finally.

  She nodded.

  After a moment, he shrugged. "A cleaner must come in Sunday mornings, sweep up all the gum wrappers and what-not from the Saturday night crowd. You'll get it back."

  "From who, Lon? Where do I go to claim it?"

  He gave her a sidelong glance. "Is this worrying you, too?"

  Her eyes shifted from his face, her only answer.

  He pressed his lips together, then answered in an even tone. "They're running a business, Carrie. There's got to be half a dozen ways to trace who's behind it. Like who pays the rent on that space . . .?"

  She stared at him. Of course: it was that simple. The lease on the cottage had been handled by Edna Swann. Edna would have to know where to reach Mr. Peale—or whoever operated the place; from the lease, or rental checks, she'd have an address for the office, a bank at least.

  He saw his point had registered. "I've also given thought to the other things," he went on, "like the interfacing. There are answers, Carrie, simple and logical." He ran his hand over her hair, down her neck, across her back. "But do you really need them now?"

  Did she? The afternoon was fading and she still wanted to touch him, to be touched.

  She shook her head.

  "You'll see," he said quietly. "When you get to understand the technology, you'll understand how much computers can do. You mustn't underestimate what's possible."

  It crossed her mind to say that maybe he was the one who was underestimating them. But she didn't. She raised her face for his kiss.

  The November light began to fade early and the room grew dim. They knew the house wouldn't be theirs alone much longer. Lon told Carrie to use the bedroom's adjoining bath if she wanted to shower before dressing; he'd use the one down the hall.

  She showered and dressed, but didn't spend very much time in front of a mirror. She felt great, and liked what she saw when she looked at herself. Eyes sparkling, skin radiant. In love! She did nothing by way of improvement but shake out her hair and comb it back with her fingers.

  Coming out of the bathroom, she spotted a table in a corner arrayed with framed photographs. The soft light from a near window fell across the two pictures on the front edge. One showed Lon with two very young children, all lined up on the deck of a sailboat and squinting into the sun. A smaller photo was recognizably of much earlier vintage—a sepia tint portrait of a middle-aged woman, masked inside the frame in the style of an oval cameo. Lon's mother, by all odds.

  Then Carrie noticed a color enlargement in the second rank of frames. Though partially blocked by the sepia cameo, Carrie could see beach and blue ocean at the edge of the blow-up and, nearer to the center, a bare arm and shoulder and the sliver of a torso in a bikini; the top of a face—hair, brow, eyes—also peeked over the top of the frame in front. A California candid of the wife, Carrie supposed, though a little surprised Lon would keep it on display. The woman didn't sound like someone of whom he'd want a constant reminder. Then again, she was the mother of his children, and even from a partial image Carrie got the impression of a lithe sexiness, provocative eyes. Understandable, after all, that Lon might want to remember why he'd stumbled into marriage in the first place. Curious, Carrie went to the table for a better look at the photograph.

  She didn't know why she would be so stunned when she picked it up, saw the whole of it. Like everything else that had struck her as strange in recent days, the picture could be easily explained. Yet it didn't matter what reason or logic could be supplied for what the picture revealed. By instinct if not intelligence, Carrie felt this was not coincidence. And that brought the doubts back, made her doubt everything she felt about Lon, sent her brain scanning over each moment in their short history. Made her feel peculiarly vulnerable . . . like some kind of target.

  Then she heard him come into the room. She stood as if paralyzed, facing away to hide the suspicion and alarm that kept coming in waves as she stared at the image in the frame.

  Approaching her from behind, he had no sense that she was doing anything but admiring the snapshot.

  "Beautiful, isn't she?" Lon said, walking up to embrace her. "That's my daughter, Dana."

  19

  "Goodness, this is so unlike me!" Edna
Swann complained as she stood at the open drawer of a filing cabinet in her office. She had spent the past ten minutes searching for the lease on the Bedford cottage.

  She was a small, bird-boned woman with blue-rinsed hair cropped mannishly short. Summer or winter, Carrie had never seen Edna dressed in anything but trim dark two-piece suits with high-neck blouses. Edna was like that, neat and predictable. If she said something was filed in a certain place, there was no doubt it ought to be there.

  The realtor closed the file drawer with an exasperated slam. "I've gone through the a's, b's, and p's. That covers 'Bedford,' 'Peale,' and 'Arcade.' Before that I checked all the Elm Street listings. I'm sorry, Carrie, I just don't know what's become of that lease."

  Carrie hated to believe the lease was gone—that someone intent on concealing information had lifted it from the files. Because only Lon had known she was coming here this morning to check on it. One more painful reason to doubt him.

  Then she had an idea. "What about Pooh's cousin, Edna, the one who inherited the cottage? Could you have filed the lease under his name? It wasn't Bedford, was it . . .?"

  Edna's mouth dropped open, the surprise of recognition. She spun straight around to the files and scanned the labeled drawers. "Vickrey!" she cried suddenly. "That's the name."

  Yanking open a drawer, she pulled a dossier and triumphantly plucked out a sheet of paper. "Here we are!"

  Carrie felt no surprise at the discovery. Like those with a defect in their vision who can see an object at arm's length, then reach out and discover their judgment was inches short, Carrie was beginning to accept her view of the arcade as her own faulty perception, a kind of handicap.

  Edna had been scanning the lease. "Oh dear," she said. Pointing to the bottom, she handed it to Carrie.

  Beneath the signature of the lessee, Thomas Peale, Carrie saw an address written in the same hand: "4 Elm St., Millport, L.I." She handed the lease back.

  Replacing it in her file, Edna explained that she had asked Peale for another address, but he'd said that since his firm was presently relocating, it would be most convenient to use the arcade as a place to receive mail.

  Carrie asked Edna if she had made a note of Thomas Peale's bank in case she had to query a check.

  "Check?" Edna said. A quirky smile broke across her lips. "Do you know . . . I've never had one."

  "But the rent—"

  "It's paid, regular as clockwork. But in cash."

  "Then Peale comes here every month?" She'd follow him, Carrie thought. If it came to that, she could wait until he showed up at Edna's office, and trail him back to wherever he came from.

  "No," Edna replied. "I haven't seen him since that one time he came and signed the lease."

  "But then who brings the cash?"

  "Nobody."

  Carrie had visions of packets of dollar bills—or bags of quarters—being left on the realtor's doorstep.

  Edna chattered on. "Well, you know how convenient banking has become. The money is deposited at a branch of my bank. I don't know which branch, don't know who brings it. All I know is it comes in first of every month, gets transferred into my account automatically."

  "Automatically?" Carrie echoed, wondering if that meant it could be easily traced back to its origin.

  "Of course, dear," Edna said, "the way everything's done these days. By computer."

  The way everything's done these days.

  Did she have to see something sinister in that? Carrie scolded herself as she walked along Elm Street, heading back to her store. All banks had computers, used them to transfer funds.

  "Morning, Carrie. Lovely day . . ."

  Deep in thought, Carrie had gone two more steps before the words penetrated. She looked around in time to see Jill Sutter walking past. Quickly, Carrie returned the greeting and walked on, falling back at once into her ruminations.

  No one else in town seemed to have noticed anything wrong with the arcade. Why should she be the only one?

  Why hadn't anyone thought of gravity before Newton? Someone always had to be first.

  Atta girl, Carrie, comparing your observations with the discovery of gravity! She could add egomania to paranoia.

  Still . . . the rent was paid in cash. Why would any businessman do that? Records had to be kept.

  Then she remembered George Patterson, his whispering about an underworld connection to the arcade. She had laughed it off. But now she thought of articles she'd read reporting the way legitimate businesses were used as conduits for illegal profits. Laundering dirty money, that was the phrase. Could it be . . .?

  No. The money wasn't the point here. It was the game. The rent was being paid in cash, transferred by computer, to make it impossible to trace the people responsible for Spacescape.

  There had to be something evil about the game. But what? And why was it aimed at the children?

  Passing Bloomers, the Elm Street florist, Carrie's glance was caught by the window full of colorful flower arrangements. She thought of the roses Lon had sent her, of how she'd felt receiving them. And she thought of the way he'd made her feel later, of having him inside her . . .,

  Only yesterday.

  She wrenched her gaze from the florist's window and hurried on. Much as she yearned to call Lon, lean on him for advice and reassurance, she knew it was out of the question. Not after the way they had parted yesterday afternoon.

  Finding the photograph, learning the girl was Lon's daughter, had been the flashpoint for an explosion.

  "Yes, she is very beautiful," Carrie answered at first, and tried to leave it there. All she wanted was to get out of his house quickly; she knew it would be dangerous to discuss the picture's meaning for her.

  But Lon heard the undertone of distress, couldn't fail to react to her sudden withdrawal, her haste to leave. Following her out of the bedroom and down the stairs, he pressed for an explanation.

  So at last she asked him: "Do you know who your daughter spends her time with?"

  He answered slowly, puzzled by her drift. "Kids around town."

  "Which kids?"

  "I haven't learned their names yet."

  "What about a boyfriend? Has she got one?"

  Lon stared at her. It wasn't only the answer that eluded him, but her reason for asking. He replied patiently, however. "I really don't know. But she's only fifteen, Carrie. You know kids at that age—they keep a lot to themselves."

  Even then she might have dropped it. Or taken a different tack. But she was ruled by doubt; she had to pin him down.

  "Don't you think you ought to know, Lon—that it's your responsibility to know?"

  He gave her the last measure of tolerance. "I suppose it is. But it isn't always easy to keep up with the kind of responsibility I have at work, and also keep tabs on my kids. I have to trust them." He made one last effort then to lighten the mood. Moving closer, he reached to embrace her. "Hey, why are we getting into this? Why all this interest in my daughter's love life when we were doing so well just concentrating on our own?"

  "Because," she said, slipping away from him, "your daughter seems to be involved with my son. He isn't quite thirteen, Lon, and yet there's something between them. Something that isn't . . . completely normal."

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "I've seen them together down at the arcade. They're always there. And she came to my house, too, looking for Nick. I wondered about it then—a girl so desirable, so mature, choosing to hang around with a boy two years younger. I just never realized she was yours—"

  "All right, what if she is? And what if she goes to the arcade with Nick? So they both liked to play the game."

  Finally, she snapped. "The game," she nearly screamed, "the damn game! You make it all sound so natural. But it can't be, Lon. Christ, have you taken a good look at what's happening? That game is doing something to these kids, affecting them in ways that go far beyond how they maneuver some tiny blip of light to beat a computer. It's making them organize into units, cells—
just five boys and a girl in each one. And it gets them worked up somehow, stirs up a kind of passion for the game that's out of proportion, unhealthy. And maybe other passions, too. Why should Dana, the one girl in her group, be paired off with Nick? It isn't just a matter of sharing the game, Lon. I've seen the way they look at each other, touch each other. . . ."

  He was speechless for a moment, shaking his head with disbelief. "My God, Carrie. Do you know what you sound like? Raving about a game being responsible for kids doing nothing more than, well, exploring, growing up—"

  "My son is thirteen!"

  "And you're concerned about what's happening with Dana. Okay. We'll look into it, you and I. But, Carrie, please: don't let this tear us apart. Dana's a good kid. I know she looks like a bombshell, but for God's sakes, don't hold that against her. She's actually very shy, reserved. Bright as hell, too. She's not likely to do anything stupid or harmful—for herself or Nick. She probably hooked up with him because he is young and innocent. She doesn't like all these older guys who come on to her and try to hustle her into bed. She's not ready, and she hates the pressure. With Nick she can feel safe. . . ."

  In that moment, there was a chance to patch it up. As always, Lon was the voice of reason. Solid. Sensible. Persuasive. Carrie felt herself loosening up—

  —and then fought against it, fought to keep her grasp of a different reality.

  "And I can feel safe with you?" she said.

  He paused, as though it were beneath him to answer. But then, very quietly, he said: "You think you can't?"

  "I don't know. It seems like such a damn strange coincidence, that's all. My son getting wrapped up in this game with your daughter—while I'm being seduced by you, the game's great defender."

  The last straw. He attempted no more explanations, offered no defense. He announced simply that he was taking her home—the situation made all the more awkward when she reminded him she'd come by herself, her car was out front. There was nothing left to say then.

  Twice as she drove home—the first time right after taking the turn out of Lon's driveway—Carrie had pulled over to debate going back. She mustn't lose him. She would take an oath never again to raise the subject of the arcade.